High demand for ammunition forces retailers to limit sales

Businesses in Upstate changing how much customers can buy

Extremely high demand for gun ammunition is forcing retailers to limit how much they sell to customers.

Jim Braziel is the facilities manager at Sharp Shooters. He said ammunition has been flying off the shelves.

"People just don't know what's going to happen; they don't know six months from now what the government's going to do, so they're trying to stock up, literally," Braziel said.

So Braziel is making sure his supply will last as long as possible.

"We want to help them as much as we can, but we got to be fair to everybody," Braziel said.

For the range at Sharp Shooters: two boxes per person. At the retail counter: Braziel said customers can buy only two to three boxes of ammunition for 9-millimeter, and 38-, 40-, 45- and 22- caliber weapons.

The hunt for ammunition frustrates customers like Billy White.

"We'll have to go to different stores on different days to purchase an adequate amount," White said.

At Allen Arms, manager John Van Swearingen said the store owner -- the late Frank Allen -- had a feeling he needed to prepare for this.

“He made a lot of purchases, very large purchases, on ammunition in 2011 and 2012, assuming that the election either way that it turned out would carry some sort of spike in demand,” Swearingen said.

For now, Allen Arms has only had to limit 22 rim fire ammunition.

“We've had to restrict it to range use until our next big order comes in,” Swearingen said.

Braziel expects the orders to come in within the next month or so.

"Manufacturers closed for the holidays in December, January was the month of all the shot shows, and so the manufacturers are saying 'Ok, before we start sending out all these orders, we want to make sure we get in everything from the shows so we can send out, say, 10 trucks at one time instead of two trucks five times,” Braziel explained.

Corporate stores are making similar changes.

Walmart said it's limiting all ammunition sales to three boxes per customer per day. Spokeswoman Ashley Hardie told News 4 that the company is monitoring supply issues daily and will adjust the limitations accordingly.

Dick’s Sporting Goods on Woodruff tells us they're limiting regular ammunition to three boxes per customer. Managers said they’re limiting shotgun-shell sales, other than game loads, to six boxes per customer.

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